How to Make a Gin Martini

Tenth in the “How to Make a Drink” series. The gin martini is one of the world’s most popular drinks. The dry martini recipe is one of the most argued points in bartending, with much disagreement over how much gin to put into a martini. Gin recipes are very common—here’s how to make a knockout martini using classic ingredients.

Ingredients

-Gin: There are varieties of gin, but for martinis I like Bombay Sapphire gin. Recipes for drinks, including dry martini recipes, taste better with quality gin, and Bombay Sapphire is as good as any gin out there.

-Dry Vermouth: You can use any number of dry (white) vermouth. I like Martini & Rossi, but I’ve used Noilly Prat and Tribuno with satisfactory results.

-Lemon peel or olive: martini garnish

1. Make sure you start with your gin in the freezer and the vermouth in the refrigerator. The colder your ingredients, the less ice you’ll melt when you mix them. Additionally, you’ll want your martini glass in the freezer, so that martini ingredients do not warm up too quickly after being poured.

2. Preparing the tumbler. Before I mix the martini ingredients, I like to chill the tumbler. You can keep it in the freezer, but I usually take ice & water and shake it until the tumbler is frigid. Pour out the ice & water and dry with a cloth.

3. Fill your tumbler with ice.

4. Pour your gin and vermouth using a shot glass. For a dry martini recipe like this, I like a 7 to 1 gin to vermouth ratio, so I find that 3 shots and a half shot of gin followed by a single half-shot of vermouth will fill most martini glasses. However, in any case, I do measure precisely—loose pouring leads to a sloppy gin martini.

5. Put the top on the tumbler & shake. I usually give between 3-5 shakes, as any more shaking will only serve to “bruise the booze” and water down your martini ingredients.

6. Pour the martini ingredients into the glass and top with a garnish. Use one green olive as your martini garnish.